Dark Star Wars

Disney, having recently bought Star Wars, has declared the entire Expanded Universe non-canon. In Dead terms, they will now be treating all the novels and whatnot like Enthusiasts treat the Vince years: yes, there was the occasional nugget, but it’s on the whole better left unspoken of.

Now, some of the stuff was good and answered interesting questions about the Star Wars Universe: after the death of the Emperor and the destruction of the second Death Star, wasn’t there still a massive Imperial Armada? Wouldn’t there be a power struggle for control over all those Star Destroyers? As the record shows, however, most of the questions answered in the EU were ones like “Why don’t we clone the fuck out of everybody?” and “Has it really been a week since someone dug up a long-forgotten super-weapon?” and “What if Luke flirted with the Dark Side…AGAIN!?”

Luke played chicken with the Dark Side in every sixth one of the EU novels. (And make no mistake: there’s a metric fuck-ton of this stuff, from the novels to the comics to the video games.) It became wearisome quickly: he was like the boy who cried Sith.

It was either that or tedious, Silmarillion-like backstories for the minorest of characters. There was the 14-volume Remembrance of Banthas Past, in which Uncle Owen takes a sip of blue milk and is catapulted back through his childhood on Tatooine, back when Mos Eisley was a one-dewback town. Or Ewoks in the Mist, the ten-year study of life on the Forest Moon of Endor by famed interplanetary anthropologist D’an Fo’ss.

In the aughts, the EU meandered around, bogged down in a ridiculous war against a foreign culture deemed barbaric that was seemingly immune to the once-thought-universal powers of our heroes. Also, in Star Wars–

I see what you did there.

Plus all the “me-too” stuff. Ocean’s 11 a hit? Time for Han, Leia, and Chewis to pull one last heist in Mos Vegas. Zombies making a comeback? Boom: infection breaks out on a Star Destroyer and Lando is forced to team up with Boba Fett and a mysterious stranger to fight their way out. What if Chewie was a teenage werewolf in a love triangle? That kind of stuff.

Speaking of Chewbacca, he was semi-famously killed off in the Expanded Universe when some vikings from the next galaxy over threw a moon at him. So, maybe, that’s all that needs to be said about its legacy.

So long and thanks for all the clones.

The Big Retcon

I am now retconning the Grateful Dead. All thirteen of you know that I have, up until this momentous occasion, unofficially declared everything post-Brent to be only dubiously existent. Yes, there’s scattered evidence here and there, but–and I say this impartially–doesn’t it just make more sense to believe that the band mysteriously disappeared in a 1979 plane crash? Well, their plane didn’t crash: a plane crashed into their tour bus. Six of one, half-dozen of another.

But as of now, I declare all of the Land of Welnickia barren and off-limits. Vince is no longer in continuity. He has ceased to be canon: Vince is the Dead’s version of the Expanded Star Wars Universe. (You know the Expanded Star Wars Universe, right?  The place where everybody had Jedi babies and the Emporer had hidden so many clones of himself in so many places that by the time they were four novels in, every 13th person on Coruscant was named Not Secretly Palpatine’s Clone. Then a moon fell on Chewbacca.)*

Isn’t life easier now? No more nonsense hype about the 91 Boston Garden shows, no more having to pretend that the oakland ’92 Dark Star was as good as a ’72.  ANY ’72. Five less years taking up space in your head.

You’re welcome.

*That really happened, the Chewbacca thing. These guys whose galaxy is even far, farther away than the one our heroes live in, attacked Luke and them and Luke and them fought back or something and then Chewie was helping to evacuate a planet –like  you do–and the bad guys threw a moon at him. So now, Chewie’s dead. Except he’s not really, because he was only ever just a pituitary case in a Space Monkey suit